I called my bro yesterday to wish my niece a belated happy birthday. He was in the midst of the morning chaos — getting the kids packed off to school with homeworks and lunches, while getting himself ready for work. My SIL had left for work.

We chatted briefly. I told him that my kids had off from school for Thursday and Friday, because New Jersey has a bogus teachers’ union convention that no teacher actually attends. While he doesn’t have the bogus teachers’ union convention in New York State, his school district had its own annoying random holidays that made life extremely hard for working families.

My brother went into full rant mode about how hard it was for him and his wife to find coverage for their children, when schools closed. He said, “You should write a blog post about that!!” I have, my dear bro. I have. When the kids were very young, and I worked a lot, the random school closings sucked even more for us.  I had kids in two different school districts that each had their own random holidays. It’s extremely difficult to find anyone to watch a special needs kid. Also, Steve was not able to help out at all.

There is a growing demand for schools to stop this random holiday stuff. Parents expect that schools will conform to standard business hours. Schools do not want this responsibility. Who will win out?

I’ve got Ian in a standard public school in the standard special ed program. It’s not a great fit. His academics are better than the other classmates. They aren’t doing enought to deal with his weaknesses like pragmatic speech and social skills; a few old guard administrators say that their job is to just deal with academics. Since the school board wants to keep kids like Ian in the school district, change is happening quickly, and some people are less than pleased.

The mission for public schools is rapidly changing. (I can’t write a proper conclusion, because one of my kids who is home from school is bugging me to do a project on this computer. Ugh. Hitting “publish.” )